FFR '33 Hot Rod Build - The Race Rod

Street rods have never been known as handling cars, but why can't they be? If you're fabricating suspension anyway, why not build in geometry that'll make it go around corners like a slot car, with fat tires on all four corners? Factory Five Racing was reading our minds, literally, and built just that, a '33 Ford kit with real underpinnings and a low enough curb weigh to guarantee blistering performance. For a few coins less than 20 grand, you get everything but the drivetrain, wheels, tires, paint, and a few assorted smaller items. We showed the new kit and what it takes to prep the body in last month's issue and return with a complete buildup of one here.

2/33Here's the majority of the build crew with the partially finished car. This was on Wednesday, the midpoint of a five-day buildup.

Actually, complete is not totally accurate since it's impossible to cover everything in even a year's worth of stories in a monthly magazine. FFR's build manual on the kit is a whopping 397 pages of step-by-step illustrated instructions, and when you first start looking through it, it's easy to get intimidated. So we conspired with Factory Five to cheat on a buildup in a most entertaining way-and one we're pretty sure is going to catch on with other people building kits.

FFR has a very active group of customers offering advice and friendship on its website. The word went out on the message board that HOT ROD was going to follow the buildup of a car in California and was looking for volunteers to jump in and help. Approximately 20 agreed and were summoned to Langley Kersonboom's Hermosa Beach, California, shop, LK Motorsports, with the goal of tearing open the boxes on Monday morning and driving the finished car out of the shop by Friday night in time for the annual kit car show at Knott's Berry Farm. The only advantage the team had was that the body had already been painted by Jeff Miller, as we covered in last month's issue.

3/33The monstrous FFR instruction manual looks intimidating, but every single step is illustrated with a photo and explained in detail.

As stated earlier, seven pages cannot possibly cover even a fraction of what's involved in building the FFR hot rod kit, so don't look at this as anything resembling an instruction manual. Rather, this story is intended to show that it's not an overly difficult kit to assemble (and in fact is easier than FFR's straightforward roadster kits) and that with enough people who know their way around a wrench (and even a few who don't), you can build one in a short amount of time. No lying, it only took five days on this one. And the best part is, you can have fun with a group of buddies while doing it.

Next month we put the finished car to the test, but we'll tease you a little here-it's really fast.

LK Motorsports
Langley Kersenboom's Hermosa Beach, California, shop is the West Coast go-to place for pro-built Factory Five cars. While the company specializes in the FFR Challenge series (a class within NASA that runs all FFR roadsters), it's well versed in building turnkey versions of any FFR component car. In the shop on any given day are several street and race roadsters, a GTM supercar in progress, and a hot rod or two. Just before our build party, LK had gotten its new four-wheel dyno up and running, too. If you're reading this story and don't feel like you have the time to build a car yourself, LK can set you up.

Special Thanks
We gotta give props to a few companies that really helped this project come together in a timely manner. First was Summit Racing Equipment, which provided most of the needed parts (like a fuel pump, carburetor, and so on). This build certainly wasn't the first time we've had to make panic-stricken, last-minute calls to Summit to get parts next-day'd, and it probably won't be the last. Also, ANplumbing.com in Lawndale, California, graciously provided the various lines and fittings we needed, and Tom Hanson of Auto Restorations (310/739-1957) did a masterful job of upholstering the door panels, headliner, and rear bulkhead in yummy black leather.